Harmful language in Omni
Libraries, from the early 20th century onward, have created and relied upon standardized methods of describing and organizing materials (e.g. books, journals, e-books and other electronic resources, archives, etc.) in our collections.
Implementing such standards and methodologies for describing library resources is essential for the success of systems like Omni, the Libraries’ shared public catalogue. Use of these broad standards provides more consistent searching, accurate facets to hone your search results, and functional linked fields such as those for authors and subjects.
These shared standards also support searching across multiple resources, many of them external to McMaster. In fact, most of the description of library resources that you see in Omni originates outside the McMaster Libraries. This descriptive information is created by publishers, vendors, and other libraries, and feeds into your Omni search results along several different paths.
While standardization has allowed more rapid cataloguing of library materials and enhanced sharing of materials between libraries, it has also privileged white, Anglo-American perspectives. Library professionals of the past and present have used harmful language, including racist and outdated terms and harmful representations of people with marginalized nationalities, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, disabilities, and gender identities.
We recognize that this can make using Omni a difficult experience for members of the McMaster community, and we are taking steps to make Omni more approachable and welcoming.
The Libraries are committed to working to address harmful practices in our cataloguing, classification, and description and to making decisions around this work more transparent, with this page as a beginning. To learn more about specific actions the Libraries are taking, please review our Actions toward more inclusive metadata.
We welcome your thoughts and input on this work and encourage you to reach out to us if you have questions, concerns, or encounter harmful language in Omni.
